


Balancing the Cosmic Equations

by devilinthedetails



Series: A Hundred Drabbles [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Karma - Freeform, Politics, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25918951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Galen seeks to balance the equations of the universe and his friendship with Orson Krennic.
Series: A Hundred Drabbles [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880980
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2





	Balancing the Cosmic Equations

Visiting Professor 

Galen Erso knew he’d have to do well in this post of Visiting Professor at the Institute of Applied Science on Coruscant. Orson Krennic had found it for him, and a poor performance would reflect on his best friend as much as on himself, Orson had made that clear as the kyber crystals Galen truly wanted to study. Besides, the job came with its perks of a good stipend and free apartment (not to be sneered at in Coruscant’s expensive real estate market) along with its clunky title, and he didn’t want to loose the stipend or the free apartment. 

School Friend

School was supposed to be challenging, Galen knew that in an abstract way after hearing his classmates complain about assignments all his life, but to him it’d always come naturally as breathing. He excelled in mathematics and the sciences, outgrowing what his teachers could teach him on the agricultural backwater of Grange. 

That was how the teacher who’d submitted one of his mathematical solutions to the Republic Futures Program without his knowledge or consent had explained it. That was how he’d ended up on Brentaal. That was how he met the boy who would become his best friend, Orson Krennic. 

Pushed to Greatness (or Gifted) 

“Do you know what your problem is, Galen?” Orson demanded, the words not presaging a diagnostic so much as another sales pitch for him to abandon his pacifistic principles and pursue the militaristic research where the real credits could be made. “You’re gifted but you’ve no ambition.” 

“I don’t need ambition.” Galen’s lips slid into a grin that was an invitation for his friend to stop the nagging and return his smile. “I have you to be ambitious for me.” 

“Yes.” Orson’s answering grin was tight. “But it’s not easy being the one pushing you to greatness all the time.” 

Karma (or Balancing the Cosmic Equations) 

A mystic on Espinar had once told Galen about karma—about the sum of a being’s good and bad deeds carrying over from one life to the next after reincarnation. He didn’t believe in reincarnation, but still the concept of karma had appealed to the mathematician in him as the universe’s method of balancing cosmic equations. 

Since he didn’t believe in reincarnation, he modified the theory of karma so that the good and bad deeds a being committed would be balanced in a single lifetime. The flaw in the Death Star would be karma for the Empire, Orson, and him. 

Design Gambit

It’d been a gambit to speak with the Imperial pilot Bodhi Rook about the cruelties of the Empire, nonetheless entrust him with a message for the Rebel Alliance about the vulnerability in the monstrous Death Star he was compelled to create. It’d been a gambit to build such a structural weakness in the first place. 

He had no idea about how any of these gambits would end, but he could only hope that they would balance the cosmic equation by allowing him to play a vital part in the destruction of the Death Star he had been forced to design.


End file.
